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A 90 minute match can see fans swerved from anger to joy, from despair to relief.

Fans are not passive observers, they are the lifeblood of football so, if occasionally, they step over the line, let’s not get too hysterical about it.

However, there have to be boundaries and one of them is the sanctity of the pitch.

From time-to-time an event occurs that is so seismic you’d have to be President of the Killjoy Society to condemn a spur of the moment pitch invasion.

Such occasions happen once or twice a generation.

One that springs to mind is the post match celebrations that followed Boro’s promotion to the second tier at Ayresome Park in 1987.

Post match scenes following Middlesbrough's win over Millwall at the Riverside

Less than a year earlier this club had been liquidated and, at the start of the 1986/87 season, played their first ‘home’ fixture at Hartlepool.

Attendances for early home games were well below 10,000. But Bruce Rioch’s young team of largely homegrown talent staged a genuine promotion charge that captured the hearts of the Teesside public and crowds steadily nudged into five figures.

When promotion was clinched thanks to a mid-week 0-0 draw with Wigan, thousands of fans spilled on the pitch to celebrate the club’s remarkable phoenix-like rise from the dead.

There was a genuine link between the fans on the patch and players celebrating in the directors’ box, who earned relatively modest salaries and tended to socialise in the town.

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The post-match celebrations that followed Boro’s 1-1 draw with Brighton two years ago were, if anything, a huge collective sigh of relief that the club had clinched promotion after seven years out of the top flight.

Middlesbrough fans invade the pitch after the match against Brighton in May 2016 (Image: Getty Images Europe)

As many fans pointed out in the immediate aftermath of Boro’s 2-0 win over Millwall, qualifying for the play-offs was not a cause worthy of a pitch invasion.

It has been argued that if the club hadn’t made so many appeals to fans not to invade the pitch, both in the build-up to the game and over the public address system during the match, it may well have not taken place.

But that’s a red herring. Middlesbrough shouldn’t condemned for trying to avoid what turned out to be an embarrassing and potentially damaging post-match incident.

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When the club won their only major trophy, the Boro fans celebrated in the Millennium Stadium stands, they didn’t race onto the playing surface.

And the fans stayed in the stands after the incredible victory over Steaua Bucharest in 2006, a match that ended with Middlesbrough earning a place in the UEFA Cup final.

So if such an historic, nerve-shredding semi-final encounter doesn’t lead to a pitch invasion, there’s no earthly reason why fans should feel the need to encroach on the playing area after what, when all’s said and done, was a textbook home win . The result wasn’t really in doubt once Jonny Howson made it 2-0 in the 66th minute and fans went into the game knowing that, barring a staggering collapse in form, they were all but guaranteed a play-off place anyway.

Police inside the Riverside at full-time in the Middlesbrough vs Millwall game (Image: Katie Lunn)

The celebrations felt forced and, with the play-offs still to negotiate, premature. It wasn’t even the last home game of the season.

So what is so wrong with pitch invasions?

The major issue is health and safety. Players are extremely vulnerable when hundreds of fans pour onto the pitch.

There have been examples of players being jostled, kicked and even punched in recent years.

That is simply unacceptable.

The majority of the people going onto the pitch on Saturday wanted to do nothing more than celebrate and pat one or two of the victorious Boro players on the back.

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But those that approached the away section clearly had something else entirely on their minds.

Had the Millwall fans not decided to stay in their seats at the weekend and, had the stewards and police not acted quickly, a very unpleasant incident could have occurred and Boro would have been in seriously hot water as a consequence.

There was a time when pitch invasions were virtually unknown.

Boro fans celebrate promotion at Ayresome Park in 1987

That was because most English grounds featured fencing that made encroaching onto the playing surface all but impossible.

When the fences came down in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, there was an unspoken agreement between the clubs and the fans that supporters wouldn’t take advantage of the easy access to the playing area.

The fences were a health and safety nightmare and also spoiled the viewing experience of those near the front of stands.

To avoid a repeat of Hillsborough, clubs deliberately made it easy for supporters to escape onto the pitch in the event of a problem.

For years, that uneasy truce held, barring a few isolated incidents.

But pitch invasions are now becoming commonplace.

A new generation of fans have, thankfully, never had to watch football from fenced in stands.

But perhaps some of those same supporters need to reminded that with greater freedom comes greater responsibility.